A Lover's Portrait
by birdywings
Summary: Jack laughed bitterly as he anxiously raked a hand through his snowy hair, which stuck up when swept back. "Know her? I was madly and completely in love with her." He smiled slightly, remembering the day he begged her to let him paint her; because he was capable of painting more than just bunnies on windowpanes. (My first Valentine's fic. Cover by me.)


A Lover's Portrait

Jamie Bennett entered what he expected to be the warm sanctuary of his condo, bringing the snow on his boots in with him as he stepped through the door, which had been frozen shut and didn't open without a struggle, but was surprised to find it just as cold inside as it was outside.

He kicked the door shut behind him, dripping what remained of the melting snow from his damp hair onto the floor as he made his way to the kitchen where he set down the plastic bags of takeout he'd brought back with him.

"In case you weren't aware, some of us aren't immune to the cold like you are." He called out to what appeared to be the thin, frigid air blowing in from the open window as he zipped up the last of his coat and glanced about the frozen apartment for the company he had expected would already be here waiting for him to return.

But he didn't have to search what appeared to be an empty room for long, because almost immediately did the boyish laughter of his roomate betray his location.

"I'm not going to lie," Jack Frost responded as he suddenly appeared in the recliner. "my immunity sure does have its uses."

"Good for you." Jamie muttered through his chattering teeth as he began to empty the bags.

"What's on the menu tonight?" Jack asked, floating over to where Jamie stood and hovering rather unnecessarily close while he peered over his shoulder.

"Chinese."

"Again? I don't think your mom would approve of the diet you've been on this semester."

"Which is why you're not going to tell her because I'm way too behind on homework to cook tonight - plus the roads were bad enough just getting to the restaurant so there was no way I was making it to the grocery store, and who's fault is that exactly?" His brown eyes flashed accusingly back at Jack, who shrank innocently beneath them.

"I have no idea to what you are referring Jamie. Perhaps you've contracted something from all the bad weather you've been exposed to this harsh winter."

"Yeah, and it looks like a serious case of Jack Frost. Now go make yourself useful by shutting the window."

"I prefer the term _frostbite_." He slyly remarked as he flew to the window and shut the wind out while Jamie dished all the food onto plates when he noticed something on the floor.

"Hey Jack, is this yours?" He asked, and was about to hold it up when he couldn't resist the temptation of examining it once he'd realized what it was.

It was a painting - a miniature one - of a beautiful woman who's platinum locks fell in a plait around what he realized to be her bare shoulders and arched brows dug a nervous smile into her lips and deep flush into her pale cheeks. Her blue eyes shined back at him and were slightly closed and made her look as though she was sleeping while she was awake. She was undeniably gorgeous, and certainly a sight for sore eyes. But never had Jamie, to his recollection, lain eyes on her before now, nor could he recall Jack ever having mentioned her. So who was this mysterious woman and why was he carrying a picture of her around?

"Jack," he said, holding it out for him to see. "who's this?" He immediately noticed how wide Jack's eyes had become when he realized what he was showing him.

His thoughts were a roller coaster. _Elsa... She must have fallen out._ He fished around in his pocket a minute, as if he was trying to make sure that she wasn't the one in the portrait Jamie was holding. But, sure enough, his pocket was empty - in fact, its seam was unraveling.

"N-nobody," he stuttered, snatching the portrait from him and tucking it back in his pocket. (He would try to mend it later). "She's nobody."

"Jack, I don't pretend to know anything about art but I do know that, to have a small painting like that one is rare."

The whole room seemed to be holding its breath while he waited for a response from Jack, even the wind seemed to have quieted down from outside.

A brief, but solemn, smile crossed Jack's lips when he removed the painting from his pocket and passed it off to Jamie once more, vaguely regarding the breathtaking image of her as he did. _Maybe the time is right. Maybe he's ready to know._

"Her name was Elsa." He slowly spoke, being especially careful with her name as if he was afraid of saying it wrong after all this time, while he watched Jamie inspect her picture again for the second time.

"And you knew her?" He asked when he glanced up from her fair complexion to Jack with wide eyes.

Jack laughed bitterly as he anxiously raked a hand through his snowy hair, which stuck up when swept back. "Know her? I was madly and completely in love with her."

He smiled slightly, remembering the day he begged her to let him paint her; because he was capable of paintung more than just bunnies on windowpanes.

* * *

 _The sun was just beginning to climb the horizon when he began to stir and opened his eyes to greet the young daylight filtering into the room. Its golden rays fell across the bed sheets and tangled itself in the winding plait she wore from the previous evening in her tousled platinum locks, and he loved watching how the morning light illuminated the accents of her frame ever so discreetly - because why should beauty be disguised? What was there to hide? And who living on earth wouldn't wish to feast their eyes upon one of nature's most precious gifts?_

 _A strand or two of her blonde locks had come astray right where the soft spot upon her neck - and the place he had so tenderly grazed many times in the past - was, which made it utterly irresistable for him to carefully thread his long, wiry fingers through them until she awoke._

 _"Good morning Snowflake," he said, because it was what he said to her every morning. And he liked being the first to greet her, especially when she looked as ravishing and as bewildered as she did when her blue eyes blinked his face cast in the morning light into focus. "Sleep well?"_

 _"Mmm," she softly moaned, her gentle breath warm against his bare chest. "I would have if we'd had more of it."_

 _"And that's your only complaint?" He said, leaving a trail of kisses along her throat before proceeding to graze his nose against hers._

 _"I have no complaints." He loved watching the deep creases dig into her forehead whenever she arched her brows like that, and he couldn't help but rub them smooth just so that he could watch them wrinkle all over again._

 _"I do, however."_

 _"Tell me." Her blue eyes grew large in their sockets as if they were asking him the question as well as her lips._

 _"You have yet to let me capture the essence of your raw beauty upon the canvas." His fingers were in her hair again - all ten of them - and they'd been busy while they talked, for already had he nearly completed half of a second braid._

 _The flush deepened in her dimpled cheeks and for a moment did her gaze fall from his before she answered. "Oh, Jack, I couldn't. How could I? Posing away like one of your models? I'm not one of them and never will be." She slid out from beneath the covers then, taking only a thin sheet with her to the small kitchen that adjoined the even smaller bedroom._

 _"I ask not that you be like them or imitate them in anyway my love, only that you allow me the chance to paint a masterpiece of your face." He said, following close behind._

 _She put the kettle on the heated stove, not even bothering to trade yesterday's water for some that was fresh, and tapped her fingers rhythmically against the counter as she waited for it to come to a boil and endeavored to ignore her endearing lover's pleas for what wasn't the first or second or even third time._

 _"Elsa, my dear, I beg you. I shan't come across another complexion as fair as yours." Th_ _e water was boiling now, and easily drowned out his words - not that she needed to hear them to know what he was saying._

 _He snuck his ams around her narrow waist and almost caused her to lose the grip she had on the sheet she covered herself with when he spun her around before she could reach into the sink to rinse last night's dirty glass. She wouldn't look at him now. She wouldn't look at him because she didn't have to to know how big his eyes were growing in their sockets - and how could she possibly refuse him when he looked at her like that?_

 _But she looked at him anyway, because to resist was in vain, and let blanket fall from around her shoulders to their ankles when she lay her palms on his bare chest - a little to the left, just where his heart beat beneath his baby-soft skin and all twenty-four of his ribs. He liked her better this way; not exactly vulnerable or even exposed but just uncovered, like she was being revealed in her entirety. She even seemed almost blissful stripped of all her layers, as if she was happier out of her garments rather than in them._

 _As a spirit, Jack was never entirely able to grasp an artist's fascination with capturing the nudity of a human's body, at least not until becoming one himself. And since becoming one himself, he often found that an artist's perspective was a lot like looking through a kaleidoscope; the view was constantly in motion, always shifting, and never without color. But in everything and anything could beauty always be found in some form, shape, or size._

 _In acquiring the additional senses of an artist, he realized that there was a certain natural beauty to a naked human body that he was blind to before, one that was often misunderstood and not so easily beheld - beauty did lie in the eye of the beholder after all. But, fortunately for Jack, he quickly learned just where to look for it, because it was always there; already drawn, penciled, sketched and all. All he had to do was remove all its layers until he found it._

 _"So Jack Frost," her tone was ice cold, which caused her thick Norwegian accent to show - and she hated it when that happened; not because she was ashamed of her Norwegian heritage but because she didn't like the way it slurred her words and made it difficult for her to be understood. It was as cold as her hands against his goosebumped chest when she spoke, but she wasn't mad. No, she wasn't mad. "Are you going to paint me? Are you going to paint me like one of your snow angels?"_

 _She lay her lips against his then, standing on her toes to do so, and his body passionately responded by pulling her body into his and deepening the kiss. With their fingers drawing circles in each other's skin and their eyelids barely half open, he pressed their bodies gently together and felt her tongue dancing inside his mouth when he opened it. But just as soon as she had pulled him close did she pull away._

 _"Well, don't just stand there," she said, those eyebrows climbing up her forehead for the second time this morning as she tossed a coin to him from her handbag and made haste for the bed. "As a paying customer, I expect to get what I want."_

 _He caught the coin and shoved it deep into his trouser pocket before rummaging about for the first clean paintbrush he could find and the only blank canvas that was available._

 _"After all, the last thing I need is another picture of me looking like a porcelain doll." She said while she neatly arranged the cushions upon the bed until she was comfortable._

 _"Are you telling me you've done this before ma'am?" He cheekily remarked, adjusting the curtains until the sunlight streamed in from where he wanted it to._

 _"Perhaps I've had more admirers than you'd believe, and if I have then I can't think how it's any of your business how many of them have painted me naked." She teased in as bold a tone as she could muster, which was almost as cool and slick as his was - although she was blushing immensely._

 _"I wouldn't be surprised in the least, my love, if you had the entire world lined up right outside the door to admire your beauty," he carefully positioned the canvas on the only easel he owned, which also happened to be a frightfully wobbly one at that. "Now take a deep breath and hold still love."_

 _"Easier said than done," she said with a quirk in her brow; but neverthless she sucked in a deep breath through her nose, which scrunched adorably when she did, and felt it shake on its way out of her mouth as she relaxed into the linen._

 _He began by smearing the canvas in as light a shade of blue as he owned in his collection - the philosophy he'd acquired overr the years was never to begin by staring at a blank canvas because you would most likely never be able to see past all the whiteness at the end of the day - before doing anything else. The paint was thick against the canvas, but gradually was he able to smooth it out with the end of his brush, and just as slowly was the image of Elsa beginning to take shape amidst all the splotches of blue._

 _Her body came out in soft strokes wherever she had skin (which was everywhere) and sharp ones wherever she had curves or angles, which seemed even sharper on the canvas than off it. Her full lips were still swollen from kissing his earlier when he drew out the timid smile they were twisted into upon her face and deep into the vague flush of her rosy cheeks. Her knit brows nearly closed both her eyes so that he could just barely see the blue rings in her eyes and thought her asleep even while she was awake whenever he glanced at her or look closely enough. What remained of her unraveling plait he drew in long silver strokes across her naked shoulders, which was as far as he got before he ran out of canvas._

 _Not so quickly did the hours seem to pass when he painted them by, and they wound up being the most neurotic four hours and twenty-eight minutes of her life - she was counting the whole time she was posing for him. But they were also perhaps the most memorable she had ever and would ever live, because she liked the idea of her body being used for art; of her flesh coming to life upon the canvas. And she liked him like this; because never before had she seen him so comfortable than when he held a paintbrush in his hand and was in the midst of creating something with it. When Jack painted, he went to another world; and when he painted her, he took her there with him._

* * *

She wouldn't let him show it to her when he'd finished, which made him sad to think that she'd never had the chance to see it while she was alive. But she wouldn't even glance at it, not because she was afraid of what she looked like but because she'd done it for others to admire. So was it selfish of him to have kept her to himself all this time? Was he a bad person for not sharing an artistic piece of history with the world? But she wasn't just a piece of art; she was a person, and being dead didn't change that - being dead didn't make it okay for them hang her like a piece on their walls.

He took her picture back from Jamie and placed it gently on the fireplace amongst the various framed photos he had of his sister Sophie and himself, along with the occasional photo containing their mom; most of them were from when they were kids and others were more recent. But he knew Jamie had plenty more where those came from - he'd once showed Jack his mom's most treasured collection, which contained photos from when each of them were born to when their last reunion a week ago (one photo for everyday), and Jack had been so fascinated with it, not just because of how devoted of a parent she was to have captured practically every moment of her childrens' lives but because you could see all the time that passed in their youthful faces from one photo to the next in all the smallest possible ways, as if for the one moment it took to snap the picture they were suspended in time.

So it was here that he decided was her place. She would have liked to be seen rather than admired, especially in the smallest way when all those who stared had to look closely to notice her; and who better to do it other than someone Jack trusted more than anyone and someone he knew she would have liked?

She would have preferred it this way - and he was tired of being selfish just as he was sure that she was tired of seeing nothing but the inside of his pocket for two centuries. She deserved this; to be among years worth of silly and spontaneous moments - it was right where she belonged and right where he would always see her. She may not have been able to take him with her when she left but he was always waiting, right where she had left him.

He sucked in a deep breath, which shook a little on the way out, and turned back to Jamie, who smiled when he did. And he, Jack Frost smiled back when he remembered just how hungry he was.

"Let's eat."

* * *

 **This was my very first Valentine's fic for Jack and Elsa so please let me know if I did our frosty couple justice. If you would like to see more work from me, feel free to check out my other Jelsa stories and don't forget to leave reviews:)**

 **Thanks for giving this a shot!**

 **-birdywings**


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